Domain: kolab.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to kolab.org.
Comments · 54
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Re:That's great news!
What about the Free Kolab server?
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AwesomeExchange is probably MS' best and most important product that has no Open Source equivalent. I am aware of Kolab and some other works-in-progress, but none of these are even close to Exchange yet. Exchange has more than its fair share of security problems, but what it does, it does well. Now with Connector being released GPL, that will have two consequences: The free downloadable version of Evolution will be able to use Exchange's features, and hopefully other OS tools like Koffice/Kmail will pick up those abilities, too. Also, having an open source client side might help them in getting an open source server side move faster. Now I just wish that Evolution would be properly integrated with KDE. They are doing it with OOo...
I'm a full-time desktop Linux user, and not just for coding, but for every aspect of business, so all this stuff matters to me. This week is going to be a great week in Desktop Linux: Suse 9.1 and Crossover 3 are both coming out at about the same time, and both are huge improvements over what came before.
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Re:Winning the battle
FOr small companies that use Outlook only as an email client perhaps. Thunderbird is no substitute for Outlook when you start talking about company wide contacts sharing, resource scheduling, shared calendars, meeting invites, voting buttons and all the other things organisations are used to using on a day to day basis.
I hate to always be the one bringing it up, but there are several solutions in terms of Linux groupware. The lacking part seems to be client connectivity with the servers.
You might argue that an email client isn't the place for such features but no-one's going to drop their client that offers them in favour of Thunderbird when no other app is available to offer the missing feature set.
Like it or loath it, until there's a real Outlook replacement linux lacks the groupware companies are used to and desktop adoption will be restricted.eGroupware has an excellent XML-RPC and SOAP interface, Kolab already has several Outlook connectors available, but the native clients (Kontact for KDE, which has eGroupware and Kolab support as well as Exchange Server 2000 support) are not out yet. It would be great if someone were to integrate client capabilities for those suites into Mozilla (or something similarly cross-platform).
Most organizations I know are tied to Windows because of Outlook, not because of Office (most can't even tell the difference between OpenOffice and MS Office).
At least the outlook (no pun intended, really) is better than it was a year ago.
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Good
The site seems to be
./ed, but it looks like a good thing. In particular, I like the fact that they have realised that people might want to change Exchange (pun not intended) for a free alternative, but do not necessarily want to change the clients, and want to have all the bells and whistles of calenaring, room bookings et al.A similar effort is Kolab, which has been sponsored by some German government department, and where they are trying to integrate both Outlook (the client) and Exchange (the server). While this is a sexy-looking project, clients using Windows do need to buy the binary connector, which isn't free (or cheap, for that matter).
I hope that these two groups co-operate, so that we can have a good working solution ASAP